Strange Symptoms?

Lately, coronavirus is showing an increasingly wide range of symptoms - some incredibly strange. This ever-growing list includes things like microscopic blood-clots, strokes, lesions, and many more. These things may seem unexpected and strange, but in truth, they should be expected. Everyone's body is different and you cannot expect that each and every person's immune system is going to react in the exact same way. Different people will have different immune responses to the illness.

Part of the reason behind the international feeling of surprise regarding these issues is that coronavirus is a respiratory disease, so surely it shouldn't be causing issues with the brain, the heart, the liver? In fact, the thing that is causing multi-organ failure in 1/5 of people with COVID is actually a phenomenon called a 'cytokine storm'.

For some patients, the virus' effects do not end at debilitating pneumonia and scars from holes in the lungs. Their immune system needs extra help to deal with the virus, so it releases small proteins called cytokines into the blood stream. These act as immune beacons to the other parts of the body, pointing out inflammation and infection, to allow white blood cells to deal with it effectively. Occasionally though, the immune system releases too many cytokines and this causes a flood of them in the body. In response to this incredible amount of markers, the white blood cells begin destroying anything and everything in the way and causes a large amount of inflammation inside the body. This inflammation, bad enough already, can begin to weaken the blood vessels. This can allow fluids to seep inside of them and damage organs, causing multiple organ failure.

When a respiratory illness hijacks the body as COVID has done, it can cause serious damage to the lungs - many of you would already know this, but what some of you may not know are the hidden consequences behind this. The damage done to the lungs causes a reduction in the amount of oxygenated blood running through the body's complex circulatory system. This can lead to the heart pumping harder than ever before, trying to compensate for the lack of oxygen in the blood stream. The increasing pressure on the heart can cause heart failure, or severe heart damage - this is why in China, one in five coronavirus sufferers experience cardiac damage, for example, a heart condition called myocarditis. This condition weakens the heart muscle, which makes the heart struggle even more than previously anticipated and can also cause heart failure.

Unfortunately, these issues are affecting all ages, young and old, making them that bit more dangerous. In addition to the previously mentioned symptoms, there are new theories that suggest that coronavirus actually places itself into the heart tissue directly, and that is why there are so many heart related issues associated with the illness. Viruses enter your body like any other microbe, but in COVID's case, it is mostly through the airways, but what you might not have heard is how it enters individual cells. It looks for potential entrances - proteins present on the outside of cells called receptors, and attacks through there, hijacking the cell to use it as its personal breeding ground.

Scientists have shown that the heart tissue contains the same receptor that coronavirus uses to invade the lungs, ACE-2. Despite this evidence, no one has been able to definitively prove that this is the case. I believe that it is definitely possible, since viruses will use any and all available tissue to breed and replicate themselves, and since the heart has the same 'gateway', COVID-19 could definitely enter through there. Professor Robert Bonow, a professor of cardiology at a distinguished university, says that these issues could also be caused by the effects of the cytokine storm that I previously mentioned. On the other hand, chickenpox and HIV, to name a few, have been proven to enter the heart muscle and infect it directly, showing that it is possible, as well as the fact that research shows that coronavirus can infect the lining of blood vessels. These developments are not only affecting patients, but doctors too, as they need to rethink their methods of diagnosis - if an elderly person comes into the hospital claiming he has a pain in his chest, is he having a heart attack or is he infected with COVID?

As well as this, coronavirus is causing evasive and mysterious clotting in patients across the globe. Blood clotting has been established to occur for three main reasons: first, if a blood vessel's inner lining is broken, it can utilise proteins that promote clotting; secondly, if blood flow is stagnant, for example, if a patient is laying down on a hospital bed for long period of time; thirdly, blood vessels can obtain a buildup of platelets (the part of blood which allows clotting and scabbing to occur) and this can cause clots in the blood. All three of these are suspected of playing a role here. In addition to this, cytokine storms can accelerate the effects of clotting and magnify the extent of other inflammatory conditions that can block vessels, such as atherosclerosis (where there is a build up of plaque in the vessels, cutting of most blood flow through them). With all of these issues, it is no wonder that there are heart-related symptoms in relation to coronavirus. The micro-clotting can not only damage the heart, but can also block dialysis machines, which are used to deal with severe kidney disorders and also build up in other organs - making this more dangerous still.

Lastly, the infamous rashes that are affecting children in particular. There has been wide-spread panic about this, especially regarding if there is any major danger about them. Unfortunately, the skin related symptoms do not end there - there has also been evidence of severe skin lesions and the terrible range of symptoms that have been caused by a 'Kawasaki-like disease'. A virus like COVID can cause a rash in one of two ways. The first is where it directly attacks and inflames the skin cells, as chickenpox does. The second is to provoke the immune system and cause random rashes as a 'normal' part of the response to a viral threat or as a part of a cytokine storm. Normally, viral rashes appear typically in >2% of patients with other viruses.

Studies on the rashes are showing a wide disparity in the proportion of people who get rashes, ranging from 20% to 0.2%. Scientists are currently doing more research to find the true percentage, and solve the confusion plaguing the scientific community. But potentially even worse than all of these, is the strange Kawasaki-like illness that has made a surge into the forefront of people's minds. Kawasaki disease is a rare disease that causes severe inflammation in the blood vessels. It was mainly spotted in Japanese children. We still have not managed to discover its origin but it has made a resurgence in children now, causing a spate of symptoms including full body rashes, swelling, bloodshot-eyes, and stomach pain. Although it was not marked as a severely dangerous disease, it can cause debilitating heart complications. Already, numerous children have suffered it, with at least one death in the UK.

So far, there have been two strains spotted. One focuses on viral sepsis, which an inflammatory response to infection which can cause a lower blood pressure, as well as weakened heart function. The second appears a few weeks after exposure to COVID (or so it is thought), which appears to be more like classic Kawasaki, but also causes the mis-shaping of select arteries, which can cause even more damage to the heart.

Even though all of these things sound very scary and dangerous, these complications are incredibly rare and do not affect everyone who contracts coronavirus. I just wanted to give everyone a clear description of what some of these strange symptoms are and why they might be happening. I really enjoy the science and the biology behind it all, and I hope that this blog has helped you to understand, at least at some level, the reasons behind what is happening to some people and explain how it is even more paramount to stay inside and stay safe now than ever before.

Thank you for spending the time to read this, please drop a like and a comment if you enjoyed it.

See you next week.